Following quickly on the heels of last weeks' Beta 4 release, we have a new Beta 5 release of the moka5 LivePC Engine available for download now!

What changed in Beta 5?

• UI performance and stability has been improved. OpenGL video driver support is no longer required to run the LivePC Engine.
• We have fixed the LivePC starting issues that began appearing with Microsofts' Windows update on Tuesday.

Please give this release a try today by downloading and running the installer — it will safely upgrade an existing installation. We will push this out as an autoupdate for all users next week (this never happened for Beta 4 due to the Windows update issue).

Send us your feedback on the forums soon to ensure that you are heard before our official 1.0 release!

Do you want to protect your privacy while browsing the web? Do you want to avoid being spied on? Do you want to send encrypted emails and instant messages anywhere you go? Do you want to be James Bond? Then you should check out our latest LivePC: Fearless Browser. Install it on your USB device and show it off to your friends.

A standard Windows installation can be pretty big - up to a gigabyte or more. About 80% of that is useless junk that you don't need, which just takes up disk space and makes your system run slower. This is especially true when you are building a LivePC - the environment is virtualized so most of the hardware drivers are unnecessary. The question is, how do you strip out the
bloat without breaking anything?

There are a couple of tools that will help put your Windows on a serious diet. We've used these at moka5 to build some truly tiny Windows LivePCs - just 38MiB for a basic Windows XP Pro installation! You can layer on the software you want and have a lean and mean, yet fully functional, Windows LivePC that you can fit on a small USB stick.

The first tool that we've tried is nLite. nLite takes a standard Windows installation CD and allows you to make a specialized version where you have stripped out components or added your own programs. The program is under active development and new versions are appearing every month or so. The UI is straightforward to use - you can easily integrate hotfixes and drivers, remove components, and add patches and tweaks to your Windows install. We used nLite to generate a stripped-down Windows LivePC that we use daily. It is only 170MiB but still has all of the necessary functionality.

The second tool we've tried is WinBuilder. It is rather unique in that it uses the QEMU emulator to boot and configure the Windows image. It includes a powerful scripting facility for manipulating the image - for example, compressing your executables, changing your default shell, or making a tiny LiveCD version of Windows. There is a thriving community of script writers and the scripts can be shared and autoupdated. We've found WinBuilder a little harder to use than nLiteOS to build LivePCs. However, it is very flexible. We built a 38MiB Windows XP install that was actually functional! WinBuilder is a powerful tool that has a lot of potential.

Update 2 (Oct 9th, 11:30pm PT): Beta 4 has been republished on the Get Started page. We found a work around for the installer problems and are working on a permanent fix in the next beta.

Update (5pm PT): we found some potential problems with the installer for Beta 4 and have removed it from the site for now. We'll let you know when it is ready to download again. Our apologies, but we want to make sure that the experience is as smooth as possible for you.

I wanted to begin by saying thanks to everyone who has downloaded the LivePC Engine and joined the discussion on our forum! We're working hard to get the software ready for an official 1.0 release, and it's great to know what features and bugs matter most to you!

There's a new beta build of the moka5 LivePC Engine. The build number is 1.0.6752 and we've been calling it Beta 4. You can download it now from our Get Started page.

We haven't fixed everything yet and we're already busy working on Beta 5. Here's the highlights of what we have fixed in Beta 4:

• LivePC startup is now much faster when 'Let me make changes to this LivePC' is enabled.
• The UI for chosing automatic update or let me make changes has been simplified.
• Importing plainDisk VMDK files now works.
• The UI was reporting "buffering..." after buffering had been completed.

If you have an existing LivePC Engine, the Beta 4 installer will upgrade the software and keep your existing LivePCs. The first time that you run Beta 4, there may be a delay as some internal data files are upgraded to a new format.

We're posting this today as an optional download. Early next week we will make it available for automatic update to all older LivePC Engines.

Please try it out and post your feedback on the forums!

P.S. You may be wondering — what happened to Beta 1, 2, and 3? That's a long story...

Not a big deal. Just buy a new device and re-install the LivePC Engine. During the installation, it will ask you if you want to restore your virtual environment to the new USB device. It's that simple. You can get more information on how our backup/restore feature works from here.

I have installed the LivePC Engine on my Motorola SLVR cell phone, which has a 1.0G SanDisk microSD card. The installation took a long time but it fitted everything it needs on the microSD. I was able to launch the Engine but it also took a very long time. I guess the microSD is too slow for this application. I hope the memory card will be fast enough in the future as I really want to carry my computing environment on my cell phone.

Next test, install LivePC engine on my Sony PSP.

Do you know that you can import LiveCD directly into the LivePC Engine? Just click Import, select LiveCDs as the file type, and then open the LiveCD ISO file. You can use the LiveCD as one of the LivePCs.

If you are a LiveCD creator, do you know that you can publish your LiveCD through our website and let the users try it out easily? Just go to the Beta Garage at out site, click "Submit a New LiveCD," and fill up the form on the "My LiveCDs" page. With our technologies, your users will not need to download the whole image file and burn it on a CD before they can try out your creation.

The LivePC Engine provides a feature that allows user to share files between the LivePC and the host computer. If the LivePC is configured with this feature, then the user can saves a file in her "My Document" folder and she can access the file from her host computer. She can access the file even the LivePC is not running. The LivePC can be configured to share files between other LivePCs. More information about the file sharing feature can be found here.

Quake II, released on December 6, 1997, is one of the best first person shooter games developed by id Software. The moka5 team has put together a very small Quake2 LivePC that let you re-live the history. Just go to the Beta Garage and download the Quake2 LivePC.

By the way, we even set up a couple Quake II Arenas on our server for multiplayer games. Check it out and you may find some of us there "testing" our LivePC.

People often work from home by setting up a VPN on their home computer. However, it is quite difficult for non-technical users to get a VPN to work and it is also difficult for the system administrator to debug the user's home computer remotely.

By creating a LivePC with the VPN pre-configured and all the proper security settings, users can easily invoke this LivePC from home to connect back to the corporate network. System administrators can also pre-install the LivePC Engine on a USB device and give it to the users. Now the users can access the corporate network without installing any software on their home computer.

The extra benefit for this approach is the system administrator can update this LivePC with new features or software patches and all the remote users will get the updated LivePC without installing any software.